Special service telephone calling is now widely and creatively used in this country for a variety of services, both commercial and non-commercial. Among other advantages, special service call processing allows subscribers for "800" and "900" inbound services, for example, to promote the same seven digit telephone number nationwide (perhaps especially tailored for unique association with the subscriber) and to thereby avoid numerous local or long distance telephone numbers. Thus, whereas the usual seven digit telephone number is rather rigidly associated with a particular telephone station, special service calls are not and they must be routed for appropriate, responsive service on the basis of some network intelligence.
Typically, the inbound, special service traffic, such as that to be moved in response to a toll free 800 telephone number, is routed through a long distance telephone network to a distributed arrangement of automatic call distributors (ACDs). The ACDs, which are likely to be geographically disbursed, and which may be owned and operated either by the special service customer or by the telephone carrier, further route the traffic to various service bureaus and to agent, or operator, groups within the bureaus. The particular ACD, and the particular agent group associated with an ACD, to which calls are routed may depend on various parameters such as the geographical origin of a call, the time of day and day of the week, the subject matter of a call (usually identified from the dialed number), and other similar factors. Although this allows subscribers to implement tailored route plans, the traffic routing is still rather rigidly predetermined and it is difficult to implement route changes quickly and easily to adapt to changing calling patterns.
With the enormous growth in this kind of telephone traffic it frequently occurs, with predetermined routing, that one or more ACDs may be overloaded with traffic, while others, at the same time, may be underutilized. Callers may experience long holding times prior to receiving a response and a substantial proportion of them may decide to hang up without completion of the call.
The result is that the subscriber (e.g., a customer who offers 800 call-in services) loses calls and is at least partly defeated in his purpose of offering the special call service. At the same time, other service agents, or other resources, capable of handling the same calls at other locations may only be partially occupied. Thus, the resources are not always economically allocated.
In view of these and other problems with prior art systems, it is among the objects of the present invention to provide a more dynamic, near real-time load balancing method and system for special service call traffic.
Still further, the present invention seeks to provide a system and method for routing special service telephone call traffic through a network to achieve more balanced routing as a function of the current demand for call services, the level and distribution of supply of resources available for response to the demand, and the relative costs of implementing various route plans.